The Valparaiso University Graduate School’s Arts and Entertainment Administration program is hosting a trip to see Verdi’s Otello at the Lyric Opera on Monday, October 21st. All members of the community are invited to attend. Students, faculty, and friends from the community will meet at Valparaiso University on Monday, October 21st for a 3 p.m. bus ride to Chicago. The first stop will be an authentic Chinese dinner at the award-winning Lao Sze Chuan restaurant in Chinatown. The group will then head to the Lyric Opera for a pre-performance talk about Otello followed by a 7:30 p.m. show. The bus will then return the group to the Valparaiso University campus. Contact Dr. Kari-Anne Innes at (219) 464-6843 for more information.
This trip to see Lyric Opera’s production of Otello marks the finale to the University’s Verdi and Wagner Bicentennial Celebration commemorating the birthdays of opera composers Giuseppe Verdi and Richard Wagner, both of whom were born in 1813. “The trip provides an opportunity to community members to join Valparaiso University graduate students, faculty, and other Northwest Indiana opera lovers to see this operatic masterpiece,” says Dr. Robert Vodnoy, an adjunct professor at Valparaiso University. Past events of the Bicentennial Celebration include a Verdi and Wagner exhibit currently on display at Valparaiso University’s Christopher Center Library and, most recently, a colloquium presented on October 6th, which explored the lives and works of both composers. The Bicentennial Celebration is presented by the Graduate School’s Arts and Entertainment Administration program.
Based on Shakespeare’s play Othello, Verdi’s Otello tells the story of a powerful man who becomes overtaken by the suspicion that his wife has been unfaithful. The opera will be sung in Italian with projected English texts.
Tickets for Otello start at $36 (a 20% discount) and include the pre-performance lecture about Otello at the Lyric Opera. Transportation and dinner in Chinatown are an additional $20 each. Visit http://www.valpo.edu/alumni/events/2013otello.php or call Kari-Anne Innes at (219) 464-6843 to purchase tickets or to get more information.